Taylor had surgery one week ago today. He has had a hernia pretty much since he was born, and the doctors have had us wait because they apparently tend to correct themselves by the age of 2. Taylor turned 3 a couple of weeks ago, and that hernia was bigger than ever, so last week, we drove down to the Children's Hospital at Denver.
You feel better about your child's surgery when you walk into a state of the art building that is ranked in the top of the children's hospitals in the entire country, but it's still surgery--still anesthesia for the little guy--still scary.
He was such a trooper. We talked about the doctor "making him really sleepy" and other things before he went to the operating room, and so once he got back there, he just lay very still and breathed into the mask. They gave him laughing gas to start so that he would fall asleep first, and then they did the I.V. with anesthesia. We were there for the laughing gas, and while he wasn't exactly giggling, he had a goofy grin on his face as Terry asked him silly questions.
We didn't see him again until afterwards, and while he was a little grouchy (no smiles to be had), he just seemed to handle everything so well! We only had him on his pain reliever that first day, and he just went back to normal the next day. Last night I took off his bandage and could not believe the tiny, tiny incision that looks like nothing. I guess we had a good doctor. :)
The funniest part of the whole thing was picking up Aidan after the surgery. She got to play with her best friend Brielle all day that day, and when she got into the car, she turned on the mother hen mode, patting Taylor's head and saying, "Hi, Buddy! Did you have a nice surgery?" Terry and I just started laughing, but Taylor kept on his stern surgery face.
The next day we kept him home all day with Terry while I took Aidan to gymnastics and ran some errands. He did not want to stay home and tried to reason with me: "But the doctor fixed me! I all better now!"
I'm sure I'll feel bitter in a few weeks when the bills start rolling in, but for now, I'm thankful that he's doing well, that he's "all better," and even for that experience that somehow made us treasure him even more.
